That's exactly where F/OSS has failed us big time. Just because it's "open source" doesn't mean browsers have to aggregate to whole operating systems. There was once this idea, you know, of exchanging documents and links via TCP/IP, and it was good. Then came platforms and browser wars, and the piece of crap that is JS and CSS along with them. In the end our only way out of this is to start over with a decentralized/p2p medium for document exchange. But F/OSS don't seem to get it that we need open standards not necessarily open implementations.
The same thing has happened to Linux which was ok as long as it was chasing commercial Unix, spawning POSIX even; but look what happened with systemd, wayland, snaps/flatpacks, Docker, k8s, and all the other erratic developments - all the while not a single end-user app was created in the last decade.
> The same thing has happened to Linux which was ok as long as it was chasing commercial Unix, spawning POSIX even; but look what happened with systemd, wayland, snaps/flatpacks, Docker, k8s, and all the other erratic developments - all the while not a single end-user app was created in the last decade.
Strongly disagree. Desktop Linux is better than it's ever been before, and not at all comparable to the degenerate hellhole that is the modern web.
systemd isn't perfect, but I think it's an improvement from traditional init. If you prefer the simplicity of traditional init systems, then you're free to use a non-systemd distro. Wayland is a much-needed modernization and simplification of the graphics stack, and again, nobody's forcing you to use it - X11 won't disappear any time soon. Snap, Flatpak, Docker, etc aren't exactly my cup of tea either, but again, nobody's forcing us to use them. Debian, Arch, etc are chugging along just fine. Meanwhile, PipeWire is a significant improvement compared to bare ALSA or Pulse+Jack, and iwd is a significant improvement compared to wpa_supplicant+NetworkManager.
>all the while not a single end-user app was created in the last decade.
This is the tragedy of the Linux Desktop. The problem with F/OSS is the "Free" part (as in "Beer"); as long as users resist paying for software, you will never have a rich enough ecosystem to develop that very software. The problems you list with "systemd, wayland, snaps/flatpacks, Docker, k8s, and all the other erratic developments" is that they are largely meant to solve corporate problems.
I don't think that's a failure of FOSS, just a scoping problem. Open source is a good thing and a contributor to a strong ecosystem, but it's not sufficient by itself.
You don't know how much CSS sucks until you understand it. Which is kinda the problem. CSS, its lack of formal semantics, self-serving spec process (as W3C's last holdout), and aura of Stockholm's is bordering on the criminal. There's no comparable tech as CSS that is as directly associated with the slip of the web into the hands of "browser vendors", for professionals and laymen alike.
The same thing has happened to Linux which was ok as long as it was chasing commercial Unix, spawning POSIX even; but look what happened with systemd, wayland, snaps/flatpacks, Docker, k8s, and all the other erratic developments - all the while not a single end-user app was created in the last decade.